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Which 10 stop ND?

B&H have decided to discontinue the Lee big stopper. So after a couple of months on the wait list am going to reassess and look at other options. I currently have a Cokin 2 stop but the colour cast means it is hardly neutral so would really not like to stack them.

Few options:
1. Stay square in which case Hitech do a 10 stop but have heard it has a blue cast and the Singh Ray is very expensive.
2. Or I could get a screwin filter. Hoya NDX 400 is reportedly hard to clean so maybe one of the B&Ws as I love there CPL. Would like to stick with square filters though so I am not having to outlay heaps of money to use them across different sized lenses.
3. Try get the Lee elsewhere.

re the colour cast with the cokin, my guess is you have a Canon camera. A few years back we did some experimenting here on AP and found Canon cameras had the highest rate of colour cast from cokin filters. we surmised that the colour cast is a white balance related issue where the filter causes the camera to report and use a wrong white balance setting, under certain light conditions. So try taking your camera off autoWB by selecting the WB to suit the scene, and see what happens.

Last edited by ricktas; 30-07-2013 at 5:13am.

"It is one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it is another thing to make a portrait of who they are" - Paul Caponigro

re the colour cast with the cokin, my guess is you have a Canon camera. A few years back we did some experimenting here on AP and found Canon cameras had the highest rate of colour cast from cokin filters. we surmised that the colour cast is a white balance related issue where the filter causes the camera to report and use a wrong white balance setting, under certain light conditions. So try taking your camera off autoWB by selecting the WB to suit the scene, and see what happens.

Rick, I don't recall the tests you refer to but I understand that Canon and Nikon have different spectral/IR response and this seems to affect the colour cast that you get from these very dense filters (such as NDx400 and B+W110). I'm not sure this is relevant to the Cokin but I think it is relevant to the B+W 110 which has a significant amber cast on Canon but I've seen several Nikon users report it has no such cast. I've never made a direct comparison so it's just here say. I have several Cokin ND's and IMHO they are rubbish because 1/ they are soft and scratch, however they are cheap and can be considered a throw away item, 2/ they have always had a colour cast, typically greenish.

OP, I use NDx400 and the B+W 110 and B+W 106 (on Canon) and prefer the NDx400 by miles because it has very little colour cast (slightly blue but very manageable). It is also very easy to clean if you do it properly so I would question the techniques being used by those having trouble cleaning them.

Thanks guys. The B&H price was the cheapest I have seen for the Big Stopper so thought other options may have been worthwhile. Sounds like it is the best out there so will look at other sources. Thanks for the link ricktas, that price is actually not too bad at 'only' about $70 over the B&H price.

And yes, am using a Canon so that may explain the extent of the colour cast on the Cokin. I had seen reviews that said they were pretty good, if that is the case there must be some bad ones out there Will try the WB settings you suggest to see how much that helps, was not aware it could have an effect on the cast. I usually shoot raw and WB set to daylight and it is not too hard to fix in PP.

a question for John....`How do you clean the ND400?`...as I find it a little difficult.......thanks.

The Hoya HMC filters are not hard to clean. The trick, if there is one, is to use a good quality microfiber cloth to finish (regardless of the steps prior). I breathe over the filter enough to get some condensation and then clean with the microfiber, maybe a few times. I have lots of different microfiber cloths but they are not all equal. The ones I like most are silk like but soft.

I also clean the filter then least I possibly can only resorting to quality cleaning fluids and lens cleaning tissues if needed, rather than as a first step.

I've always used the ND400 (9 stops) - Love the thing.
Tried the other stuff but didn't like it. The GND I had gave a strong colour cast and def wasn't ND (It was a P121)
Here's the 121, the ND4, ND8 & ND400